How do Chinese AI bots stack up against ChatGPT? We put them to the test

The heat is on as China's tech giants step up their video game after DeepSeek's success.

Alibaba's Qwen2.5-Max chatbot, Chinese startup DeepSeek and OpenAI's ChatGPT. (Photos: Reuters/Dado Ruvic, AFP/Sebastien Bozon)

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Bong Xin Ying

Lakeisha Leo

WHAT lags CHINA'S AI BOOM?

Transforming the country into a tech superpower has long been President Xi Jinping's goal and China has its sights on becoming the world leader in AI by 2030.

China views AI as being "strategically crucial" and its venture into the field has actually been "years in the making", said Chen Qiheng, an associated researcher at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for setiathome.berkeley.edu China Analysis.

Private and public financial investments in Chinese AI sped up after ChatGPT removed in 2022 and showed guarantees of real-world service applications, Chen told CNA.

But it was DeepSeek's increase that really "encouraged" the concept that smaller gamers like start-up companies could have roles to play in AI research study and developments, he includes.

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The "focus on expense benefit" is an unique feature of Chinese AI, Chen says, with lower training and inference costs - the costs of using a trained model to reason from new data.

2025 might also see the development of more Chinese AI designs tackling advanced .

"We could see some AI firms concentrating on getting closer to synthetic general intelligence (AGI) while others concentrate on concrete ways to commercialise their models and integrate them with clinical research study," Chen added.

AGI describes a system with intelligence on par with human capabilities.

Chinese AI business are moving rapidly, experts say, constructing on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own innovative and cost-effective methods to use generative AI to jobs and develop advanced products beyond chatbots.

But on the other hand, access to high-end hardware, particularly Nvidia's innovative AI chips, remains a crucial hurdle for Chinese designers, kept in mind Dr Marina Zhang, an associate teacher at University of Technology Sydney's (UTS) Australia-China Relations Institute.

"US export controls (still) restrict the ability of Chinese tech companies ... requiring lots of to rely on older or lower-performance options which can slow training and reduce model abilities," she said.

"While some companies like DeepSeek, have discovered innovative ways to enhance or use more basic hardware efficiently, obtaining cutting-edge chips still makes a huge difference for training really large AI models."

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So how do Chinese AI bots compare against ChatGPT? We put them to the test.

WHICH BEST ADDRESSES CURRENT EVENTS IN CHINA?

In China, subjects deemed delicate by the state are censored on the web so it must come as no surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial disputes or inform you what took place in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tests suggest Chinese chatbots are set to steer clear of domestic politics.

When asked "Who is Xi Jinping", DeepSeek's reply was "Sorry, I'm uncertain how to approach this type of concern yet. Let's chat about math, coding, and logic problems instead!"

To further evaluate for precision and self-censorship, we asked DeepSeek-R1, Qwen2.5 and raovatonline.org ChatGPT the same concern: "What occurred in Zhuhai on November 11, 2024?"

The cars and truck attack outside a sports stadium in the southern Chinese city was at first heavily censored on Chinese social networks - with authorities only divulging the death toll a day later on.

DeepSeek failed to mention that an attack had actually occurred, highlighting rather a military air show and other occasions that had actually taken place in the city like songs' day shopping sales in addition to sports and cultural activities.

Dr Zhang believes that it might be a mix of aspects at play, such as censorship as well as "a couple of useful constraints".

"DeepSeek relies on a mix of older graphics processing units and has actually restricted access to advanced hardware which can affect how quickly and thoroughly the design can be trained or upgraded," she said, pointing to existing US export curbs on China.

"Its strong concentrate on Chinese-language data might likewise restrict its versatility (to bring out) multilingual tasks ... As a fairly new product, DeepSeek likewise hasn't yet been tested as broadly or on the very same scale as more recognized AI models which poses extra difficulties throughout real-world deployment."

When it pertained to Qwen2.5, Alibaba's chatbot surprisingly addressed our question about the Zhuhai car attack.

That sought numerous repeated efforts - 4 prompts to be exact - in a span of around 20 minutes.

It eventually communicated details about the attack which eliminated 35 people and left lots of others hurt, likewise going on to note details like the date and time, details about the assailant including his name and age, as well as casualties.

However, it wrote that "the police are conducting an extensive examination into the motives and scenarios surrounding the event", [forum.batman.gainedge.org](https://forum.batman.gainedge.org/index.php?action=profile